by Scott Bowles, USA TODAY

by Scott Bowles, USA TODAY

Arnold Schwarzenegger's tenure as California governor from 2003 to 2011 was pretty even-keeled, neither underscored by accomplishment nor pockmarked by failure. But compared with the second half of his acting career, his politicking days seem Lincolnesque.

Someone needs to get impeached for his star vehicle Sabotage (* out of four; rated R; opens Friday nationwide), indisputably the most violent film of the year and disputably the worst.

Bloody, banal and boasting a surprisingly able clutch of stars who will soon be deleting this from their résumés, Sabotage is a 109-minute cadaver count. It's torture porn for the action set with no discernible message other than, perhaps, that friends who want to hack you and stuff your corpse in a fridge really aren't your friends.

Schwarzenegger is John "Breacher" Wharton, the head of an elite DEA task force that specializes in kicking butt and not taking names.

We're introduced to a raft of swarthy characters with nicknames such as "Monster," "Pyro" and "Tripod." There's no keeping track of all the actors, who include Terrence Howard, Sam Worthington and Mireille Enos. But not to worry: Characters die off like logic in Sabotage.

During a raid on a drug cartel safe house, our rogue band decides to skim $10 million in cash seizures. The opening scene is unsettling as federal agents nonchalantly blast suspects - and the money goes missing. Soon, Breacher's soldiers systematically get their brains splattered.

But it's impossible to build tension when you don't care a lick about the characters. It's been years since a movie collected such an unlikable group of "heroes," who kill bystanders, disregard civilians and treat other cops as grocery clerks on cleanup duty. A half-hour into Sabotage, the mystery of whether the group was set up becomes moot: They all deserve their grisly fates.

What makes Sabotage particularly puzzling is that director and co-writer David Ayer did End of Watch, a terrific look at the brutal daily grind of L.A. police work. Those cops, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, were fleshed out and painfully human.

But Sabotage seems intrigued only by gore. Breacher spends nights watching footage of his wife and son being tortured and snuffed by the cartel (his motivation for bending the rules). Maybe his cable is out. We get loads of open wounds and autopsy shots. Heads pop like overripe watermelons.

To its credit, Sabotage's action is non-stop. The chase scenes are spectacular. Folks die in creative ways: They bleed out, get crushed by trains and are sheared in traffic.

But if a body count is not your measure of a movie's quality, Sabotage is, from beginning to end, unpleasant.

Which makes Schwarzenegger's post-gubernatorial track so odd. Since returning to the screen, he's anchored the questionable The Last Stand and Escape Plan, and now this. If this is executive decision-making at work, he may want to consider his old day job.